Launch HN: GreaseBoss (YC W21) – Real-time system to manage industrial greasing

[SteveGreaseBoss]

We are Steve, Tim and Pete, the cofounders of GreaseBoss (https://www.greaseboss.io). GreaseBoss is a hardware and software system that verifies that the greasing of industrial equipment is completed on time and according to specification.

Greasing, you say? Yup, you heard that right. Incorrect greasing is the number one cause for machinery failure on industrial sites. Industrial machinery failure costs the global economy $21B a year. Greasing is a big deal!

We know this is an unsexy part of the economy, so we won’t judge you if you have never heard of a zerk (grease point) before. Some of our favourite places you can find zerks include super yachts - 200 zerks, private planes - 80 zerks, breweries - 2000 zerks, theme parks - 1500 zerks. Other places with lots of zerks include factories, mines, utilities, farm equipment, trucks and military vehicles.

The idea for GreaseBoss came when Steve and Tim saw frequent machine breakdowns due to incorrect greasing while supporting mine sites in Outback Australia. This problem costs Australian mine sites hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity every year - disrupted production, spending on parts and labour for repairs. We built and tested our prototypes during the pandemic lockdowns on the back deck, over Zoom calls. We have now developed our MVP and have quit our jobs to chase GreaseBoss full time.

On the hardware side: we put RFID tags that fit like washers under each zerk. These are read by a head unit that is retrofittable to existing grease guns, which includes a custom RFID reader integrated into the nozzle. It also includes a flow meter and supporting electronics. Our device has 4G, Wifi and LoRa for comms, but also operates in an offline mode for customers in remote locations. Our hardware is rugged, dust proof, and water proof for some of the toughest operational environments (and operators..)

On the software side, we record each greasing in the cloud, right as the worker greases the zerk. Since most industry is still tracking this using paperwork, you can imagine how much more efficient this is. Our customers get back to production much faster.

We are building a HaaS (Hardware as a Service - is that a thing?) business model: we charge customers upfront for the hardware and then a software subscription fee. We are experimenting with per zerk, per machine and per site pricing. We haven’t found the sweet spot yet.

We have GreaseBoss installed at a large coal mine, a quarry and on excavators at the dump in Queensland, Australia. We also have a South African greasing contractor using our system.

We will be online for the rest of the day answering your questions (we are in AEST timezone). We are very excited to receive your ideas, experiences and feedback!

[cashsterling]

Applying the wrong grease is also a big problem. At one facility I worked at, we had about 15-20 difference greases for different equipment in our facility. We did a lot of training on the topic of grease selection and importance of not screwing this up... yet some techs still got it wrong from time to time. With some grease combos, you do not have long to catch the mistake before bearing damage, or even failure, occurs.

This is a good idea. So your system verifies that the right grease gun, with correct grease, is used on the correct port?

[timhall99]

Hi Cash, Yes, our system ensures that the correct grease is used and that the correct amount is applied at the right time.

I heard a story from a nearby power plant the other day of the incorrect grease being applied to a bearing. The two mismatched greases reacted poorly and turned to a wax inside the bearing. Needless to say, the bearing failed catastrophically very soon after. Our system not only tracks the grease type digitally, but we also have colour coding on our tags and head units to help humans easily match colours to ensure they have the right grease in the gun too.

Cheers

[saganus]

Wow, TIL.

I'd never guessed that this would be something that requires a whole system or even a company to handle.

But after reading this it totally makes sense!

It's amazing the amount of stuff we (I) don't know about other industries and its complexities.

Cool stuff!

[blhack]

Holy crap I love this. Great job, you guys!

A thought on pricing: per machine is probably the best. If you do per zerk, customers are going to try and do one zerk on the machine, and track it on a per machine basis, instead of per zerk (which is what you want).

The employees will then learn this, and grease that one spot. The customers won't see the value (since the data will be crappy), and might end up seeing it as a boondoggle instead of the valuable service that it obviously is.

Some other thoughts, and a reason to sell per-machine: early warning systems for parts that are about to fail. If a part is leaking grease, and using up more than it should, warn the customer about it. Could be a gasket going bad, but in any case probably needs maintenance attention.

Good luck!

[estsauver]

I think you'll almost certainly want to have "Contact us" pricing. The cost of a zerk being poorly greased depends greatly on the value of that machine to the plant and the cost of that machine going down.

[jasonpeacock]

What kind of customer lock-in do you have? Is the API/data format open or closed? Can I easily export my data?

As a customer, I'd be concerned about longevity and data loss if/when you go away or pivot. Knowing that I could export my data, and re-implement my own backend using your open data standard if needed, would go a long way to easing my concerns.

Most customers won't go through the effort to build their own solution, and for those few that do you can easily out-perform with service, experience, and expertise.

You could even offer bespoke integration services...

[SteveGreaseBoss]

Thanks for the feedback, I think you are raising a valid point

We have built the platform with APIs in anticipaction of integrations with SAP, Pronto, etc. We have also built in functionality to export data out to CSV files. Our market is a mix of big corporates who want the integration with SAP and never want to see out platform and small guys who run their maintenance from checklists and like the platform.

In regards to customer lock in, the system requires physical tags to be fitted to the zerks. Fitting the tags costs man-hours and they only work with our head unit. We think this protects us in the short term, longer term the capture, hosting and reporting on the data is our lock in.

Our customers are not the types to go out and build their own software - they may copy the head unit though..

[lookdangerous]

On this note, have you explored integrating your hardware/software into customer systems? I suppose customers may have existing logging applications they feed said paper forms into, and if you could feed that directly it would be useful.

[twic]

Are you competing with equipment manufacturers at all? I worked with one big manufacturer briefly, and they were cramming telemetry and electronics into everything they could, so they could provide this kind of cloud-based preventative maintenance service (although i never heard anything specific about grease). Is there a chance you eventually won't be able to sell because machines already come with grease intelligence built in?

[timhall99]

Yes, we are aware that big manufacturers are starting to roll out lots of telemetry into their equipment. i've only seen the greasing angle addressed by manufacturers on mobile equipment (bulldozers etc) The problem with these platforms is that they are designed to encourage lock in. Lets face it, most customers don't buy one type of equipment for their entire plant. With many different brand specific platforms, it may not be palatable for customers. Our strategy is to be light, retrofittable, simple and easily integrated into customer's larger management systems (like SAP)

[fudged71]

The markets this company is targeting are many trillions of dollars. Zero sum thinking is a waste of time. Any slice of the pie is a huge business.

[sokoloff]

I’m not sure the wisdom of adding a washer under an NPT-threaded fitting at all, nor under a straight threaded fitting not originally specified to have a washer (especially in an aviation or other highly regulated application).

I wonder if you could get by in some of those applications by having the tag in a grease zerk cap instead (installed after and without disturbing the zerk torque/seal).

On my airplane, I rotate grease cap colors as a visual check that all fittings were serviced during the annual inspection. It’s a multi-day affair with more than one mechanic plus me plus interruptions, so it’s not difficult to miss some. But if the cap is blue and this year’s color is red, you find it at final walk-around.

[mauvehaus]

For anybody who doesn't already know what NPT-threads are: it's a standard for tapered threads. You see it frequently on pipes, or anywhere you need the threads to seal up.

The point of it being tapered is that the fit between the male and female parts gets closer as you tighten the fitting. In domestic plumbing, you wrap the male threads with Teflon tape, and as you tighten, the tape gets squished into the very close fit and forms a seal.

The key point to understand before introducing a washer into the system is that there isn't a well-defined point where the system can be considered bottomed axially. It isn't like a nut and bolt where once the nut hits the bolt head, it isn't going any farther.

If you introduce a washer that doesn't allow the tapered thread to tighten to a sufficiently close fit, you've potentially lost your seal and might have a loose fitting. If your Zerk falls out, you risk loss of lube and/or contamination of the lube.

I'm sure they've given this some thought, but I would also be curious to hear how this works.

[SteveGreaseBoss]

I think this is a very good idea and point. I raised the idea of GreaseBoss on the reddit aviation forum a few weeks ago and got shot down by all the questions about regulartory issues and approvals.

The tag in cap idea is solid

[jeffrallen]

So here's a question: if a company was suffering below average equipment downtime from lube problems, because they had somehow managed to have above average compliance to manufacturer's specs, would your sales pitch still work? Because as they said on Prairie Home Companion, "all our children are above average". No one thinks they have incompetent maintenance teams.

There are industries where safety risks make lube happen correctly. Are they still in your addressable market?

Good luck!

[mediaman]

In my experience, management never thinks their maintenance team doesn't need improvement, because single failures cause so much financial pain.

It's true they don't want to spend more money on labor. And sometimes that means more downtime. But if they can spend some money on something that's not labor and improve uptime, they'll be all over it.

I would use this but we buy autolube systems everywhere we'd need it.

Industrial maintenance in general is a great market to be in - huge, huge spends.

[SteveGreaseBoss]

great question and good logic.

Many sites are reducing headcount in maintenance due to high labour costs, greasing is one of those things that can be neglected. Our pitch is to do more maintenance with less head count, with GreaseBoss anyone can pick up the grease gun and be directed what to do, with no prior trianing.

Further down the track, we want GreaseBoss to power robotic greasing. But to get to this nirvana, you need to start with manual

[timhall99]

Hi Jeff, Also on your comment, what we've seen on a number of sites is that they do have a good maintenance team but sometimes jobs just get missed. If there is a series of equipment failures that draw the team's attention towards urgent repair work, of course the greasing is not going to get done. Those sites see the benefit of then having the system there to flag the greasing that was missed so that they can be completed once the urgent repairs have been completed - or at least ensure the critical equipment is greased.

[jbob2000]

I pursued something similar. The challenge you may face is that the act of regular inspections, maintaining the RFID tags, and paying for the service may cost more than doing a poor job of grease maintenance. The alternative is just simply doing regular rounds with a grease bucket.

[jeffrallen]

Or running machines to destruction and taking the downtime costs (which the dysfunctional organisation has already built into their business model, since they cannot get their employees to grade then right).

I agree that there's a danger that this is easier to justify on Powerpoint than down in the dust and mud of real life industrial financials. (Pretty sure that gold mines do not stay open when the price of gold is too low to be able to pay for forgotten grease on conveyors.)

Source: countless posts on /r/skookum referring to idiot management that runs machines to destruction then drives maintenance teams to work overtime to stop the "unplanned" downtime.

[dkhenry]

How do you perform the initial rollout and configuration ? Does someone have to manually associate the RFID with the specific zerk and machine and set up a maintenance schedule? How do you handle machines where greasing is a function of hours of operation and not wall clock time ?

[SteveGreaseBoss]

Great questions

For roll out, we try to upload the data into the GreaseCloud before going to site, then we have someone manually fit each tag to each zerk, they then use the head unit to read the code and map it into the GreaseCloud. Once it is in the grease cloud we can set the grease volume, grease interval, etc

For the timing, we have a function to set the operating timetable of each machine - most plants this is 24/7, however some are M-F 9-5. The intervals are calculated relative to the operating timetable of the machine. Machines can be "paused" if they are tagged out of production.

[arjunvpaul]

Awesome! HaaS is a thing. You just made it one.

Regarding the business model: You ever thought of a Franchise model? Perhaps train a few folks (perhaps folks who were incorrectly greasing before) who can then take contracts for the large job sites?

I have seen this practice with diamond coring machines of companies like Hilti in markets like Dubai (building contractors don't need the machine , they just need the holes they cut and they don't need it everyday) where folks but the coring machines and then charge per hole (per Zerk in your case) and Hilti provides training to them.

Regarding the segment: If incorrect greasing leads to machinery failure, then perhaps look at operations where machine failure can be mission critical. Sites like Baffin Island, where large contractors' maintenance plan is "buy 10 of each machine" If one breaks down, they just park it and put the next one into service. OR Offshore Platforms where downtime can mean several millions down the pipe. Example projects offshore in Guyana where replacements are not available onshore too.

[SteveGreaseBoss]

Great feedback.

We are exploring the franchise model, one of our customers has a contract to manage the greasing for 18k zerks at a number of different sites. They want GreaseBoss to drive their manaul greasing business, they can reduce head count and reduce admin overhead.

I used to go to Papua New Guinean gold mines and the use case of not being able to get a spare part for months is very real. These are the early adoptor operations we are targeting

[__sy__]

Second that. HaaS is totally a thing in enterprise hardware, and I'd argue it's the one business model in hardware that sort of keeps everyone aligned!

For example, the recurring revenue gives the OEM incentives to continue supporting the platform. Meanwhile, the lower upfront cost for the hardware lowers switching cost for the customer in case there's a better solution out there.

OK, obviously there's a big gap between this theory and reality, but just thought that I'd point it out :)

Congrats on launching!

[LeifCarrotson]

Very cool! I work in industrial automation and deal with grease all the time. All my equipment is indoors; sometimes it feels like the cast iron foundries are some of the most hellish places on earth but I know your Outback mine sites will give them a run for that unenviable title!

Most of the new equipment we build has automated grease dispensing systems, where my PLC dispenses a fixed amount of grease through hard-plumbed tubing onto ball screw nuts, linear rail trucks, bushings, slides, or whatever else the machine requires. Those don't need GreaseBoss fittings, but perhaps chould be able to tie into your cloud if they've got some of your equipment and some of mine.

A lot of robotic equipment and repurposed older equipment, however, plus some new equipment with hard-to-plumb areas, has automatic greasing distance counters that pop up a warning/fault on the HMI that reads something to the effect of "Grease Warning: 20km travel on Z axis ballscrew, follow the greasing procedure and enter maintenance password to dismiss or OK to continue".

Those, I suppose, could benefit from GreaseBoss in three ways: First, you could guarantee that the procedure was actually followed (that both the easy-to-access top nut and the buried bottom nut were greased). Second, you skip the maintenance password step by detecting the grease being applied. Third, you could dismiss/reset the warning automatically if my PLC could query your API to determine when the zerks on my machine were last greased.

However, Haas is a machine builder, not a viable business model. A subscription to use the equipment is not going to fly with most of my customers. They're not stingy, CapEx is already huge and grease zerks are cheap compared to the engineering costs they're paying - you're putting in a $2.5M piece of equipment, they don't care if the optional RFID grease zerks are $0.25 or $2.50 or $250 - but OpEx and equipment lifetime are critical. The idea that their equipment stops working because someone in the front office didn't pay a third party is anathema to them. They'd rather spend $250 per zerk once than $2.50 for the tag plus a yearly fee of $5/zerk for the 10-year lifetime of the equipment.

[SteveGreaseBoss]

Great feedback, cast iron foundaries are terrible places. I used to work at a foundary, the sand and the dust was terrible.

We get feedback from customers all the time that they use auto-greasers, or their new equipment comes with auto greaser fitted standard. One issue we see is when they blend the new equipment with old equipment, they inevitably have a bunch of manual grease nipples that don't get managed and are forgotton about. There is also a class of nipples that are uneconomic or physically unable to have auto lubers.

We are initially the neglected cohort of nipples as our target market, because they are the ones that fail the regularly. Our intention is to eventually get our system to cover integrate the Autolubers as well - we think it would be very valuable to have a single source of truth for greasing.

You are right in saying that our customers prefer to buy on capex, we are still figuring out ways to satisfy this. The problem of missed greasing occurs every day, so it should be paid for everyday, however our customers don't quite see it this way..

[timhall99]

Hi Leif, Haha i know what you mean in terms of the most hellish places on earth. Last month, we went 300m into an underground mine and that is not a place you want to be spending too much time.. haha

Very interesting use case and yes, the GreaseBoss system would be perfect to talk into your PLC through API's to verify that zerks had been greased.

Thanks also for the feedback on the business model (i like the comment "Haas is a machine builder, not a business model"). I agree that CAPEX expenditure for some companies is by far the easiest way to procure others are seeking OPEX as a way to manage cashflow. I think we need solid offerings for both models.

What is the name of your company? It would be great to chat further.

[Nathanael_M]

Very cool! I live in a mining town and the number one issue is just getting the mines to adopt new technologies. A lot of people very set in their ways. I've heard of million+ dollar projects just sitting unused because people weren't bothered to charge an iPad.

Do you manage the installs, maintenance, and training yourselves? Have you had any issues with people purchasing the system, but not using it?

I wish you the best of success! It's a very cool field to be in with so much potential.

[timhall99]

Thanks Nathanael, Yes, tech adoption is a risk and something that we are trying very hard to address. Our strategy is to keep the tool & system as simple as possible. Our head unit has no buttons, only a screen and a charge port and is retrofitted onto existing grease guns. We want to allow operators to work as they normally would but to have the tool that augments them and makes their job easier. We know its not going to be an easy task, but simplicity in design is our strategy to overcome this.

[petercondoleon]

Yes adoption risk is very real for us. We have encountered some operators who are as you describe but interestingly liked the idea for keeping other operators in check particularly in cases where there are teams of people doing the lubrication.

[whalesalad]

Never in my life did I think I would see the intersection of a zerk fitting and cloud computing.

[ASalazarMX]

If I had a use case, I'd consider them just to be able to mention the "GreaseCloud" at serious meetings.

[SteveGreaseBoss]

ha ha, we have had some interesting experiences explaining at pitch events and to investors.

[lifeisstillgood]

This seems likely to have a good overlap with safety procedures. As such integration with the big bads in this space would be a nice box to tick - i think the term to google is EHSQ - the only one I know of is intelex. Might be worth looking at.

Overall, I love the rfid two-step idea - it's simple and brilliant. Good luck ! :-)

[timhall99]

Thanks! Yes, i've been speaking to some guys in the oil and gas sector and one of them told me that greasing valves in that environment is a process safety concern as the grease assists the valve to seal and prevent gas leaks. We will definitely play the safety angle with these types of industries. Thanks for the feedback

[tylerben]

Loved reading this! What part of your product has received the most traction/excitement from customers? The hardware or the software/reporting piece?

[SteveGreaseBoss]

Our customers like the visibility the software brings to their operation. They keep inventing uses for the data we hadn't thought of - we had a customer who owns an intermittantly used shiploader request a report showing the last greasing of each zerk to be outputted 2 hours before the ship arrives in port, this is so they can prevent unforseen breakdowns while the shiploader is in operation and the costs are high

We still have a few iteration cycles on the hardware ahead of us - reducing size and weight and improving form factor.

[xupybd]

Have you tried selling to the wood products manufacturing industry?

Not as much money involved but companies like Borgs have sites all over and hundreds of machines that need greasing.

Many of these machines have auto greasers, can you integrate with those to monitor if the grease is flowing?

[SteveGreaseBoss]

I will check out Borgs, honestly they were not on my radar.

The autoluber question comes up all the time, initially we are targeting the zerks/grease nipples that are too low value or physically cannot be fitted with an autoluber. We are also targeting autoluber refills.

We have some specific autoluber products on our roadmap so we can have all greasing in our GreaseCloud

[oakwhiz]

Interesting concept - I have heard of grease "dose" devices before, AvE on YouTube takes one apart in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydhndNX_8KI

It's effectively an unattended, disposable piston that uses an electronic timer to periodically generate gases to push the grease out. Everything is calibrated so that it dispenses approximately the right amount over the right time period. For machines that can use one of these, I wonder if there is room for integration with the GreaseBoss RFID tags and tracking system.

[timhall99]

Yes, these auto lubricators are widespread and a competitor to our current product. That being said, these auto lubricator do have their downsides and our customers have been very open about these. One of our customers is using GreaseBoss to replace auto lubricators as it gives much better control over the greasing. Additionally, we do have a second product in development that works with auto lubricators to overcome some of the core issues that our customers are experiencing with them.

[DigitalSea]

As an Australian developer and entrepreneur, I cannot express how proud I am of you guys for launching what appears to be such a well-thought out and executed idea. Seriously, well done.

I am curious as to what issues you've encountered in terms of getting people to sign up, is it the outlay required for these companies to switch over, is the migration process from traditional manual paperwork to your system a deterrent? I know the mining industry despite leaning heavily on automation in recent years still has that outback handshake mentality surrounding it.

[SteveGreaseBoss]

thanks for the encouragement. Its good to find another aussie in these parts...

We have not had a problem getting customers to sign up, aside from the normal nobody wanting to be first customer - the outback handshake came in handy here.

The outlay required is the labour to fit the tags to each zerk - some plants have 1000's of them, so a fitter @$120/hr has to visit all of them pull the zerk off and fit the tag. When tey are fitted we need to record to ID and put it into the database, then the system is good to go.

After that, we can remotely program the intervals and grease volumes - using the know how of the people on site, or the OEM manuals. One customer did't have the data, he sent his fitter into the plant to complete a round with GreaseBoss and we used the recordings as the baseline data.

[spieswl]

HaaS is definitely a thing. PMaaS, as well! (Preventative Maintenance)

I know a number of industrial robotics manufacturers have been pushing data-driven preventative maintenance initiatives. Ideally (for the manufacturer) this work is performed by the manufacturers techs during scheduled operator downtime, including the lubing of mechanical systems.

Have you all thought about presenting an alternative arrangement for the lubrication responsibilities of specialized systems, like industrial robotics, that might already have maintenance responsibilities (possibly contracts) in place?

[turnerc]

Congrats on the launch looks like a solid and interesting product, Is there other hardware besides the head unit and RFID tags that I would need to make accommodations for? Most of the sites I visit barely have cellular reception.

Can the head unit be used without the RFID tags, for example in an environment where re-fitting a zerk can take place on the next maintenance window?

[SteveGreaseBoss]

Thanks, at this stage we have no other hardware. We are piggy backing off plant wifi or 4G. We have explored getting our own network gateway so we can bypass corporate networks.

The system can work offline, record the data in the unit and then sync when it comes back into range. Our use case is working all day in the plant, then coming back to the workshop for charging and syncing data at night

The head unit records all greasing, even without a tag, but its up the user to log in and map them to the correct nipple

[simonebrunozzi]

I love this. Good luck to the team. Unsexy opportunities are usually among the best ones to tackle.

Edit: do you know of a company called Entytle [0]? Might be an interesting partner for what you're trying to do. (I don't personally know them, and have no affiliation)

[0]: https://www.entytle.com/